BNF - The challeges facing our movement

| Friday February 19, 2010 00:00

The congress comes immediately after the general elections in which the party performed badly and poorly. Various persons have offered their opinions on the BNF's poor electoral performance.

Some have accused the party's expelled members under their temporary platform grouping, others have accused the leadership as being responsible for the party's bad performance. However, whatever the reasoning maybe for the party's poor performance, what is evident is that the party that used to appeal to the poor masses and workers alike is not growing. This negative growth experienced in the last elections makes the coming BNF Congress a critical and most important event in its political history.

The congress is a 'do' or 'die' political event for the BNF. It must get a lot of things right otherwise the organisation is doomed to perish and if it does not disintergrate it will be difficult or impossible to rebuild it again. One of the things that the BNF must do right is to honestly and openly examine the reasons for its disastrous performance in the past elections and come up with ways and means of ensuring that it deals with such problems decisively.

The part must also critically examine its administrative structure and determine whether as it is, the administration of the party allows it to grow organisationally. It must also assess its internal democratic processes and see if in its present state internal party democracy exists to enable the organization to function vibrantly, effectively with a sense of purpose. The organisation must also look into whether it has lately been sufficiently and effectively dealing with issues of public concern much to the satisfaction of the public or poor people its suppose to represent. It must look at ways and means of improving and strengthening its Parliamentary caucus and contributions of its members of Parliament so that its existance could be relevant and be felt all over the country.

The councilors contributions and debates in various district councils need to be improved and taken seriously also. The primary elections also need to be revisited. Maybe for the sake of stability, peace and organisational coherence, the primary elections must be temporarily suspended or dealt away with and the original selection process of deployment be involved.

I think that the BNF now needs to be at peace with itself if it is to be rebuilt successfully and the primary elections cannot countermand this exercise. They are decisive and breed political instability. For a very very long time the BNF has not been at peace with itself and stable because of primary elections. They have caused havoc and chaos to a point that the BNF always enters general elections deeply divided because of primary elections.

I do not think that under its present state of acute disunity, disarray and complete demoralisation and a sense of hopelessness among its activists and supporters any rebuilding exercise or rebranding of the BNF can succeed with such divisive policies like primary elections.  What even makes the primary elections worse is that their administration has been a big problem with accusations of interference by those in the BNF Central Committee. The party could also help itself if it could emphasise on being a much more participatory mass organisation it used to be.

Decision making process must be decentralized and inclusive of rank and file so that the bottom up approach of building the organisation could be realised and given effect to. The importance of the party organ in the form of a party paper like puo - phaa has been emphasised over the years but there are always flimsy excuses for its inability to be printed.

Another thing, which the BNF activists and members alike need to do is to start thinking and knowing that the BNF must change. Times are changed and things are changed. So the BNF and its members must change too. We cannot forever be enclosed in ideas and mindsets that do not take us forward. We need to change our mindsets, change our approach to relating with one another, change how we treat each other as fellow activists, stop bickering, backbiting, gossip, hatred, jealousy suspicions, disrespect and outright looking down upon fellow BNF activists, we do not love and respect each other, as BNF members. It's not unusual for BNF members to show love, respect and praise to BDP activists some retired civil servants or inactive University lecturer whom they do not know than to their own activists or members.As an example most BNF members would prefer Daniel Kwelagobe or Botsalo Ntuane to be President of the BNF or Parliamentary candidate over say Harry Mothei or Kagiso Thutlwe.

This mentality of lack of respect, love and absolute lack of appreciation of activists contribution and worth must change. As an organisation we must love and respect our activists and always be prepared to acknowledge and appreciate them their worth and value to the organisation. We should discard this thinking and mentality of always thinking that our cadres are second best or worthless.

 In the BNF it is very common that when activists want positions of leadership, their weaknesses are emphasised, they are shunned and overly criticised and unfairly compared to newcomers whose strength and weaknesses we do not know.  Say for example if Harry Mothei was to stand against say Log Raditlhokwa we will rubbish Harry Mothei as if he is not BNF and has not contributed to the BNF and praise Log Raditlhokwa whom we do not know as he has never been a BNF activist. This mentality must stop, we must know that the party functions through its activists and it is our duty as the BNF to protect them and give them support in BNF internal matters of whatever nature. So this attitude of scorn and destructive criticism and rejection of our activists must stop and change. We must change our mindsets and be more positive, accommodative, respectful and tolerant of each other if BNF is to move forward.

Besides the foregoing, one thing which the BNF forthcoming congress must get right and do correctly is the selection of leaders. In the past I have written extensively about leadership in the BNF.

I indicated that amongst the many problems that the party had, the one thing that is critical and central to its problems is its leadership. In the BNF there are no good guidelines or a well defined policy on who could be elected to a position of leadership.

The constitutional provisions that require that for one to be elected into central committee, he or she must have been a member for at least three years  is highly inadequate in any case it is seldom being followed often it is violated and any one person is elected into positions of leadership. In the BNF, everyone irrespective of whether he participated in its activities or has been active could be elected a leader.

It is very common to find that a person could defect say from BDP today and join the BNF and only for him to be elected to a position of party leadership the following day. The BNF activists would even praise such a person and may say all the good things he did for the BDP and anyone longtime BNF activists who challenge him would be totally scorned and rejected. He would be called all sorts of names.BNF activists and members believe in importing people they do not know to lead them. They simply do not have confidence and trust in their longtime tried and tested activists. But this approach is completely wrong. In a political organisation especially a progressive one, leaders are not imported. They are chosen from longtime activists of the movement, not from people who are unknown to the movement who also do not know the movement. You do not just pick someone because he is a University lecturer and was a BNF student activist some 20 years ago. Nor do you pick someone because he is high profile personality who always appear in newspapers on account of his professional pursuits. You need those that have political experience of being active, and those that have contributed to the organisational development of the party.

Those that do know the traditions and activities of the party besides the blueprint of its regulatory provisions. You need people whose strength and weaknesses you know, so that you will know how to deploy them and where to complement them. So leadership is never an open thing in a progressive political formation. It must be a well guarded and protected process which we must always strive to do properly.  If we fail to do it properly the consequences are always fatal and debilitating. If we take the political history of the BNF, it is fair to say that most of its problems were problems related to leadership. In the late 1980's when BNF was experiencing numeric growth Comrade Kenneth Koma ditched his longtime comrades like OK Menyatso, Mareledi Giddie, Klass Motshidisi and others and gave positions of leadership to newcomers like Willie Seboni, Leach Tlhomelang, Knox Kowa and others. The effect of this was that the ideological heartthrob of the movement was compromised and the party's organizational coherence was undermined. A while later Leach Thomelang defected to join Botswana Independence Party and this split the BNF in the Ngwaketse area where Leach Thomelang was based as a member of Parliament.

In 1994 Comrade Kenneth Koma also ditched Mareledi Giddie for Michael Dingake who had been recently released from Robben Island Prison. This divided the BNF badly as some longtime BNF activists rightly observed that it was wrong to group in a newcomer to the BNF even if his struggle credentials were impressive. A few years later in 1998 the BNF split and Dingake was at the helm of the split.

 In 2001 the party elected Moupo as its leader and he had a central committee of newcomers who new very little about the party and its internal processes. A couple of months later they expelled its venerated leader comrade Koma, thereby splitting the organisation. The above examples are meant to illustrate that the problem within the BNF has always mainly been its leadership. In a political organisation if you rope in people who are not schooled in the ways of the party in the key positions of leadership, the chances are that the party would split or if does not split it would be deeply of the divided to a point of complete paralysis. This is the problem we have in the BNF presently. Most of these people in high positions of leadership are not tried and tested.

Other than the BNF, a good example of what am saying is the BDP. They went to take Khama from the army and gave him leadership. Now he is busy destroying the BDP which is good anyway. So we really must treat the issue of leadership critically and take it seriously, if we really want the BNF to grow.  One thing we all must guard and protect at whatever cost, is the unity of the BNF. Anyone political leader with foresight will know that the organisational unity of any political party must not easily be sacrificed or compromised. We must elect the sort of leadership that guarantees longterm unity of the BNF and not to simply pick people on account of political expediency or because we are angry and bitter with the present leadership.

Even in organisations like churches, you cannot join today and be a Bishop the following day. They always stick with the known members for the same reasons of unity and others above stated.

The other problem in the BNF is that they do not seem to have a way of grooming youth leadership positions. Most young people who have potential to be leaders are not supported. Most of them are marginalised, especially if they show some independence of thought or are critical about something. So if the BNF can fail to get its act together in this coming congress, I forsee a bleak future for it.

The one thing that its activists must know is that it is no longer the only opposition party. There is the BCP, which tries to project itself as hope for Botswana.

Gabriel KanjabangaGaborone